


The Apple of Significance

by LittleDesertFlower



Category: Hellsing
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drama, Intense, It's AU in that Alucard's awakened sooner, Not Beta Read, One Shot, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-23 01:47:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23203747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleDesertFlower/pseuds/LittleDesertFlower
Summary: It is 1977 and a vampire’s four-decade slumber ends for a human’s selfish purposes. Through the years, the vampire realizes that perhaps there is something to be grateful for in all his misery, after all.
Relationships: Alucard & Arthur Hellsing, Alucard & Integra Hellsing
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	The Apple of Significance

In the sea, there was an island. Upon that island, there was a county that harbored many towns. Manor Hellsing stood tall and forlorn, away from them in all directions. It had been so for many, many years. Certainly more than the towns, the county and the island remembered. More, perhaps, than even the mainland did. Three floors of secrets hidden beneath paintings and dark curtains that were never fully drawn, but it was the basement, locked under seven keys, old as Europe herself and the moon up above, that had seen history come alive century after century. It was blood that spilled it open like a vein, as if history was liquid and could scurry away between stone floor tiles.

A vampire dwelled there in the night of nights, when brought forth. The first to bear that name, never the last. His back turned to the world, save for the teeth and hands, which marked him as a slave to the family that also owned the house. And so it had been, from times so old the new ones often forgot them. For most of it, he had been but a mummy, drying up of old age, not a single drop of either life or foreign blood in his body, when only a few floors above him the humans thrived, awaiting the moment to call upon him—their mercenary—to do for them what their puny selves could not do. And he would think that human lives are too small, if he didn’t live in their shadow. If he hadn’t forgotten what it felt like to stand tall and tower over their terrified silhouettes.

He is awakened again in 1977. He doesn’t ask for the date, yet he is told regardless, as if it helped to know he has been under for almost forty years. The last thing he remembers is dying of thirst, yet he’s not dead, and proof of it is the blood bag that is dropped at his feet, bursting at contact with the cold hard stone. It almost is a reminder: _You were awakened for the last war. And you have been awakened for another._ It has always been like this. Marked hands hold engraved weapons that kill in the name of one family and when his eyes close, too devoid of humidity to remain open, he knows the next time he opens them it will be to battle again. A new commander, a new mission. But always the same lack of fulfillment and the same task to fulfill.

Yet, this time, there is no night. There is no battlefield crowded with humans killing each other for sport, envy or rage. Before him, a man older than his years comes forth into the darkness from the light behind the door.

And the only thing he can ask that man, having barely regained his senses, is…

“Why?”

The answer, of course, does not come to him at once. No one in their right mind gives anything to a vampire without asking for something else in return, even if the giving itself is an act of selfishness. Especially not in this house, home of the Hellsings, refuge of nothing and bunker of little else but human endurance.

The man looks him in the eye up close, a feat not many dare to do. His name, he says, is Arthur, and he is the descendant of the men who enslaved him. Arthur Hellsing, then, walks the vampire out of his cell, where so many years of solitary death and confinement have passed, into the daylight.

They walk, and Arthur talks. He doesn’t sound like a man aware of his predicament, in control of something so mighty few know about. His voice is calm, his stride firm. He is, quite simply, informing a fellow associate about the conditions of a pre-established deal. And the vampire listens closely, because that deal is the thread upon which his whole life hangs.

Eventually, the hallways of the house converge into a tiny corner of the house, not particularly well-hidden in the face of an invasion. Arthur’s hand trembles when he reaches for the handle, yet he acts decisively when pushing the door in.

The image awaiting inside has the same effect on the vampire as blinding sunlight had earlier before. There is nothing of great value inside that room, nothing anyone would want to steal or destroy… except a tiny little basinet by the window, which contains the most precious treasure known to human life.

“This,” Arthur says, “is what you have been awakened for.”

A baby. A newborn baby that sleeps peacefully, not knowing that the world outside that window is cruel and harsh, darker than anything the sun beams might suggest, and never likely to pardon a child’s life.

Something stirs in the vampire’s heart. Memories, sometimes even crueler than the world that made them become such.

“To protect her as she grows into the next Hellsing heir.”

Arthur approaches the bassinet slowly, rests his hand on it.

“There will come a time for you to go to war, as your kind so sorely long for,” he says, his back turned to the vampire. “She is my priority now. If you do your job well, maybe she will be the one to bring it to you.”

The vampire makes a nondescript sound.

“Perhaps…”

* * *

As the following years dawn, the vampire forgets all about future wars. He is scarcely sent out outside the mansion to kill enemies of the state in the name of a toddler who can barely reach his kneecaps and already asks her father in almost perfect diction and not a hint of fear why there’s a strange red shadow always lurking in her mansion. And ‘always lurking’ means, unfortunately, that he’s more of a babysitter than a vampire these days. Not even that, because _Walter_ is there. The real shadow, the Angel of Death of World War II. And he’s the real butler, the real babysitter, the one who makes sure the baby eats, sleeps and does whatever else human babies do in their abundant free time. All the vampire really does is stand outside rooms and brood as he watches the corridors, really, really waiting for something mildly exciting to happen—say, an intruder coming in and _intrude_ so he can kill them.

Meanwhile, he’s given blood from time to time so he won’t desiccate again, a place to rest when there’s nothing required of him, and no social impositions of any sort. And he barely remembers… what it felt like to just sit across another person in a dim-lit hall and talk. All these years, trapped inside stone walls without light or life, sent into battles which he could fight forever because he just would not die, have made him lose the physicality of memories. The taste of bread… the sound of trees… the softness of the wind. Most of that’s gone. The taste of human blood, straight from the vein, that is completely lost to him—and he should have missed that most. But at the end of the day it’s still living without the warmth of someone else’s trust that hurts the deepest.

All he’s got left from the times when he had that, from before the thirst and the power were all he could feel, is a man shouting orders in fear, cowering away from the very force he’s inflicting on others. And Arthur Hellsing, like all those who preceded him, may be laxer in his ways, but still remains a human and a coward.

More humane than most, he hasn’t locked his vampire away yet and treats him with the same amount of dignity a master professes when he throws a meatless bone for his hound to chew on. But as the vampire population of the world grows larger by the day, Arthur sits in his office protecting his little human child with the one force in the universe that could eradicate the vampire epidemic.

And what is a fellow vampire to do but sit in his allotted space, drink his blood, and wait? Is it not all he is good for, after all these years? Confinement and patience, not even violence at this point. Violence is but the expression of oppression, which patience confines within his soul until the moment for release is presented to him.

What is he to do but kill his kin when sent out to do so? Betray his own kind—if they can still be called so, after centuries have turned the vampire condition into little more than just another selfish human affliction—for the sake of his own survival. Then return to stand guard at a closed door behind which a little girl lives her life, undergoes training in economics, history and language at ages at which most human children cannot even form full a sentence. He stands at the door, bidding his time, and he listens and he waits. And he might as well be a gargoyle, for no one—not even Arthur, scared of his own shadow most of the time, is able to _see_ him there unless he bares his fangs, reddens the red in his eyes, or growls like an animal about to pounce on his pray.

Some days he wonders… even in the light of day, in a house with more humans than he has seen in forty years, was he lonelier in his stone cell, desiccating, than he is now? Was he as invisible? As worthless?

Some days, he forces himself to miss the war, for the sake of having something to do, feeling blood and powder around him in the memories that slowly he keeps losing. Then, in a twist of fate, a sense of gratefulness takes him, because fighting war after war cannot bring any soul peace, and that is the blessing of being under Arthur’s rule. The change of scenery, the … faux peace, in a way. And the promise that one day, when this child is grown, all that peace he will be allowed to destroy, inch by inch, with his own hands and teeth in war. But he will not fight for anything else, a noble does not concern himself with the opinion of the sheep, and kneeling before Arthur to even subtly hint at asking for that which his heart desires would be like bleating at a count.

* * *

The procession remains ever as boring for a late summer day. He has spent the past few months, whenever the British weather allowed it, coming out to the gardens and hiding in the shadows of the gazebos as a child played in the sun with her father and butler. Today, with a decline of the humans’ shining warm star coming at a slightly earlier hour, the girl nags at her father to let her skip a lesson and go play. And Arthur, a lone wolf, a lonelier man, who trembles at the most innocuous of gestures coming from his men and has closed the house to the outer world, opens the beauties and scents of the garden for his daughter only as long as his secret vampire waltzes along in the very far background.

Tedious as it is, he has grown to prefer the shade to any spotlight. Watching the Angel of Death pick up a four-year-old and spin her in midair has given him quite a taste of what he would be up to, if he wasn’t who he is. A dog is still a dog, and so he’s just there as a precaution. What Arthur is afraid of, he certainly has never been told, but the day will surely come when the vampire of the Hellsing family will have to face it for him and his daughter.

“Father, when will the trees bloom?” the girl asks Arthur as they walk together now across the immense garden.

The vampire can always hear them, every word they utter and every step they take, how their feet crush the dry leaves in autumn and press down on the snow in the winter. No matter how far they walk, he can always hear them, and he can always feel their scents in the air. A prison of another kind, and one he can never escape.

“My dear, there are many different types of trees in this estate. I cannot give you a specific answer unless you ask me a specific question.”

It is said gently, so that the child will learn. So much around this house revolves around teaching a little girl things that children her age can hardly grasp. And yet… she nods and reformulates her question, pointing at a big apple tree not far from where she and her father are standing.

“When will we see apples in the branches of this tree?”

Arthur Hellsing blooms with laughter, booming and rich like the sound of a violoncello.

“Look attentively, Integra,” he says. “The answer is always closer than you think.”

A sharp acute sound keeps the vampire from hearing the rest of their conversation as they approach the tree. He turns his head towards the origin of the sound, trying to locate it, ready for battle, when suddenly the butler jogs out of the house towards Arthur.

“Mr. Hellsing!” he calls. “A call for you. It is urgent.”

“Certainly, certainly.”

Arthur leaves his child with Walter as he approaches the entrance to the house, but right before he goes in, he turns to the vampire who he never pays much attention to and says:

“Get closer to them. I don’t want anything happening to her while I’m gone, and Walter is not getting any younger.”

The vampire nods subtly and moves closer, just as he is told, away from the shadows and into the light of the day. The weight and warmth of the sun hit him harshly, almost tangibly. He walks slowly, as if slugging through muddy terrain, and finally stands a prudent distance away from the child and the butler, who are playing together at one of those games he will never understand.

In another time, he would have approached Walter, protruded him in the ribs and cracked a joke. Now Walter eyes him with contempt, and the child has never even seen him before. This could prove to be interesting yet. He almost licks his lips in anticipation of her fear, almost coils his tendrils around his figure, darkens his face, his clothes, and reddens his whole body so that he will look like a tenth of what he really should. But Dracula is dead, all there’s left of him is a shadow that no longer minds stepping into the daylight.

When the child notices him standing there, a shadow from the past, a ghost turned flesh but never life, she lets go of Walter’s hands, which she was clutching, and simply stares at the man who she does not know, pensive.

“Who is he, Walter?” she asks.

The butler purses his lips.

“Why don’t you ask him yourself, Miss Hellsing?”

And the vampire understands he has been invited to come closer and enter a deeper circle of the Hellsing family, so he walks to them, but does not kneel to be eye-level with the child. Not yet.

She bends her neck to look him in the eye, defiant even at the age of four.

“I do not know you,” she simply says.

“No, I wouldn’t think so.”

“Will you give me your name?”

And in that split moment, her attention wonders from his eyes, the color of blood, to a small red apple, dangling ripe from one of the tallest branches, well out of her reach. The only apple of the tree, early for late September.

The vampire looks up to see what has caught the attention of his little master and smiles, reaching out a long slender arm to grab it for her, his bony fingers picking it carefully from the branch and offering it to the child.

“I shall give you something else,” he says. “More… appealing, it should seem.”

“What about your name?” she insists.

So he kneels now. Some things are to be given on equal footing. Even so, the top of her head can barely reach his shoulders, but it is enough.

“Alucard, little master.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Little master?”

He chuckles softly.

“I don’t know your name either.”

“Miss Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing,” she says, reciting it almost like a song she’s been taught to say the lyrics to normally. “Nice to make your acquaintance.”

And she offers him her hand to shake, like she’s learned a proper lady always should. He stares at it for longer than she considers appropriate.

“Well?”

“You’re the daughter of my master. I do not think we should shake hands.”

_They’re the hands that will bind me in the future,_ he reminds himself, _keep me from unleashing all I am onto the world—and rightly so._

“Then that means I will be your master one day, and preemptively I say I want to shake your hand. It’s what a proper person does, it’s only polite.”

Now, he bursts into laughter. Curse politeness.

“If you say so, little master Integra…”

“Do not mock me!”

Her hand still hovers in the air, however. It’s a very small hand, the hand of a child. One day, those hands will be the ones either denying him sustenance or throwing him a blood bag every two months so he won’t accidentally dry up when she needs him the most. Right now, they’re just the hands of a little girl. One of them holds the apple he just gave her like it’s the most priced possession in the world, not clutching it to her chest, protective of it and of herself, but well within his own reach.

The vampire finally offers his own hand and the girl clasps it in hers, despite the size difference.

“There, it wasn’t that hard, wasn’t it, Mr. Alucard?”

“Oh, no. No ‘Mr.’ for me.”

_That was taken away from me a long time ago. Along with my real name, my belongings and my people._ Although, if he’s being honest with himself, he took that away from himself.

Now, despite having earned her hand back, the girl continues to ogle at him curiously.

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

He shakes his head, both hair and dark tendrils float around his face for a few seconds.

“Where’s your home? Is this where you live?”

And Alucard smiles sadly, because _oh, my dearest little master, those two are entirely different questions._ He’s about to stand back on his feet, retreat into the shadows which most days now he’s sure love him as much as he’s learned to love them back, when Integra’s eyes pierce him fully, ardent and inquisitive. So much life and so much potential in such a small human life, it should be impossible by the standards of her race, and yet here she is, defying the preestablished ideas a lonesome vampire holds.

Tentatively, because she doesn’t know him, Integra raises her right hand—the one that’s not holding the apple. Without breaking eye contact with those furious red orbs of war that are his eyes, she approaches his face, too big for her hand to ever be able to hold, and yet… unstoppable, her tiny hand manages to cup it gently.

And in a longing sigh the vampire lets out air that his lungs have not been able to hold within for half a millennium. His eyes have not produced a tear since he was turned by the will of god, all he has been able to cry since the day of his cursing has been streams of thick blood, and he does not think that would be proper for a child this age to see. So he just closes them.

For years he has served the Hellsings, out of a binding that came out of the unexpected and he will never be able to escape. The house has trapped him when the trappers got bored of doing with him what they pleased, his masters have butchered him themselves, sent him out to let others do it, or decided that letting him rot without blood for decades would be a fitting punishment for his past mistakes. The Hellsings have cursed him again, in death as he cursed himself at the very end of his life. They have put him through wars to save humanity, when humanity was the one creating them, going through with them, when humanity did not deserve to be saved. And they have proved time and time again that the human condition worsens every time that a Hellsing awakens a vampire for their own selfish reasons. Yet this time Arthur, scared, distant and uninterested, has given him a few years of sweet stupor that his own child, a girl that’s barely old enough to not be a toddler anymore, has broken him out of.

The girl _sees_ him. The very first time she has been introduced to the monster, she has seen the person within. She has done what no other master, human or monster ever could. God, and Alucard would just _love_ to do what he’s always done, laugh like a maniac, thrash on the ground like the dog he’s been made out to be, and disturb the girl so terribly she will never be psychologically stable in her short life. And he _could._ All this time, Arthur has been scared of something else, never of him, because _he_ hasn’t tried anything, but he could. Right now, he could scar Arthur’s little precious. And it would only take the slightest move.

Those thin fingers through which rich blood pumps are only inches away. He could attempt to bite, he could _actually_ bite. He could show her a glimpse of the nature within, the reason why he’s not home and living in a cellar with spider webs and an empty coffin instead. And perhaps it would be for the best—vampires are not friendly, especially not to little girls who will enslave him one day.

Alucard is pretty sure Integra is seeing all of that struggle in his eyes, because he has never been able to hide it, yet she still hasn’t moved her hand away or said a word against him.

When she does speak up again, her voice is soft, determined. And when he hears her words, he makes his decision—or, rather, she makes it for him.

“I will make this place your home one day, Alucard,” Integra says. “I promise.”

It is then, in the summer of 1982, that a change is enacted, by accident, yet making an impact that will last through the decades still to come.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a wordplay on how Isaac Newton discovered gravity with the falling of an apple. And the fic itself was a birthday gift to my dear friend Väl (ILY <3), which she gave me permission to post here, too.


End file.
